Infinity training on how to listen to speakers

[Looneybomber]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9lroIP3BKo

I've been a fan of Infinity since back in the day when their Overture line came out. I think I was in middle school at the time, though I may have been a freshman. That said, I watched that video while listening with a set of Infinity Beta20's.

Anyway, enough Infinity brand talk, I saw this video where they had the user pick out which frequencies were augmented and I remember doing similar tests/observations with various songs and eq settings around a decade ago.

Too bad I didn't know about this stuff back in the day. I might have been able to get paid to listen to music on high end speakers!

[audtatious]

Interesting....

What sounds good is subjective for sure. What my wife likes (relatively no bass) is far different from what I enjoy.

[Looneybomber]

Interesting....

What sounds good is subjective for sure. What my wife likes (relatively no bass) is far different from what I enjoy.

That's very true, just like how some instruments sound better to some than to others. That's why the top tier speakers tend to have voicing adjustments to help suit the individual listener...but I don't feel like taking out a 2nd mortgage in order to get these.

Heck, thinking about it, even some cheapers speakers came with L-pads built in so one could adjust the mid and/or tweeter levels some.

However, a few universals do hold true, ultimately leading to an accurate reproduction of the original source. And it's these that a person can listen for and rule out a "bad" design.

Sean Olive of Harman Int has a blog and has mentioned various things about speaker testing/listening, voicing options in the crossover and nationality, and various other things. It's a good read and that's also where I found out their reference listening room uses JBL LSR6332's along with I forget what (I believe 4) subwoofers for a 7.1*4 setup.http://seanolive.blogspot.com/

...Wow, I tend to write a lot while bored at work.

[audtatious]

Speaker design is an art for sure. "Back in the day" I met one of the engineers that worked for Eminence speakers via the old RAC Car Audio board and was invited to take a tour of the plant and his test lab. He could pretty much design a speaker to do about anything, within limits. Add weight to a cone to fix one problem and it takes from something else. More power handling, reduce something else. etc etc etc. They guy had some awesome subs he was experimenting with at the time, double and triple spiders, extended xmax, etc. I think they were making Mmats, Memphis, Pyle and a few other car audio lines at the time (1997).

I also remember, back in '93, meeting one of the main IASCA competitors from NY (can't remember his name for some reason) and listening to him describe how he designed his center channel in his Acura (not the Speakerworks Acura) by using a 3.5" speaker, a coffee cup and plastic fins to properly tune and disperse the sound waves off the windshield to receive appropriate on-axis response for both the driver and passenger. Some people simply are too smart or have a lot of time on their hands.

[Looneybomber]

I've talked with a few transducer engineers over time and have learned quite a bit about the mechanics behind drivers. Moving mass weight, VC and VC former materials, venting, compliance of soft parts, shape of surrounds and cones, and motor structures.

Right now I'm trying to learn more about adjusting flux within the motor and how one can flatten BL over a longer throw. Thus I've been reading up on various linear motor technologies. They're all pretty simple really.

I'd love to go checkout a build house, or a R&D facility for companies like JBL, Eminence, Genelec, ect. That would be awesome! Pro Audio just has so much more appeal to me than home audio...even though some of the home audio speakers really are works of art

Martin Logan's place is about 25 miles from me in the neighboring town of Lawrence and those electrostat panels are pretty cool. I'd like to check that place out some time.

[audtatious]

Yeah, and if you change one you get changes in the rest.

[Looneybomber]

Everything's a compromise.

BTW, out of my 7300ish posts on NICO, this is the first reply (your reply) that's ever generated an email. Weird

[audtatious]

New default settings. Thread starter gets email when there are new posts

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Cool idea... I hate how youtube takes forever for me to load though...

[HashiriyaS14]

Interesting....

What sounds good is subjective for sure. What my wife likes (relatively no bass) is far different from what I enjoy.

+1

For any 2-channel rig that's running on solid-state amplification and a digital source (i.e. if I'm listening to rock), I like speakers to be pretty bright. I really liked the MB Quart home stuff for awhile for this reason, and ditto on Mission.

Naturally, on analog source/tubes, I think bright speakers sound like poo.

I think that in the long run, my workaround for this, to avoid having to build half a dozen systems, is to have a fairly bright digital rig that's also a HT, and then just do my tube/analog system as a headphone/desk setup. I'm working on piecing the latter together to use as a desk rig at my office right meow.

[Markc]

Or you could run tube/mosfet hybrids like the mono blocks that my electronics engineer buddy and me designed and built. Best of both worlds I think. Tube sound with 300 watts of power and plenty of head room.

[Looneybomber]

MarkC. Did you use a kit/plan, or did you really design it from scratch?

[Markc]

Desiged it from scratch. Well, actually, my electronics engineer buddy designed the electronics and we designed the enclosures together. We actually cut up 4' x 8' sheets of aluminum on his table saw. I can give you the addy for our lameass, still not finished website if you wish.

[Looneybomber]

You guys, together, designed the amplification (what topology, transistors, transformer (unless using a SMPS), ect..), and the aluminum case?

Much too ambitious for me! Heh, maybe I should question me wanting to complete my electrical engineering degree and venture into chemical engineering.

[Markc]

http://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]/

You can read about the amps here.SMPS? Blasphemy!

[Looneybomber]

That site looks like a sales site, yet I don't see any prices or where to order?

SMPS is nice, and am not partial to either design. Both can be implemented well.

Currently I have a class H amp with a transformer and a class I (uses an iteration of Class B with a type of PWM) amp with SMPS. My class I amp produces more power, less heat, and weighs less...but I have noticed some hiss with it. My class H though has little noise (around 110db S/N).

However, I bought that class I amp to be used with my subwoofers, so noise is not a problem and it's >2.2kW output is greatly appreciated.

[Markc]

The site is a work in progress. We hope to market them one day; hopefully sooner than later. I'm actually going over to my friend's place on Mon, (Thanksgiving up here in canada), to work on the web site. We have new faceplates with a large oval glass and they also extend to the edges of the heat sinks.SMPS takes a lot attention to look after the switching noise.2.2KW, wow. No issue of running out of steam there.

[Looneybomber]

Yeah, my amp has much more noise than I'd ever want to use in a quality 2ch setup and I contribute it to...well everything...It's totally different than my other 2ch class H amp.

So for sub use, it works great; regenerative power so to speak, efficient, and has power factor correction, which means it's immune to line sag (at 130v and 100v, it'll put out the same amount of power)...and that's why I bought it.

Your amps are interesting because it includes the tube aspect, which I'm not on the up and up with tube amp topologies. Have you an idea on a price range for your "300Wx1@8ohm" monoblock?

[Markc]

Because the amps are intended for high end 2 channel use, the parts used are all expensive and therefore the build cost is also expensive. That all equates to a $4500 - $5000 per pair price tag.

[Looneybomber]

Ouch. I'd like to have a pair, but I guess my tax bracket still says I can't get monoblock amps yet.

But, if you ever need a "beta tester"...

[Markc]

Yea, I know. That's the problem. We just can't come up with a way to cut the price in half, which I'm sure many people would jump at.Unfortunately, the parts alone are over $1100 per block. I'm sure you can imagine the labour that goes into building a pair.

[Looneybomber]

Ya, you're right.

How can I make a performance car, cheap? Well, decrease the amount of performance.

Same can be said about that amp. You can make it cheaper by, well, making it cheaper and losing what that amp was supposed to and be. And that's why I can't yet have nice monoblocks.

With those amps, are you geared towards the electrostat crowd?

[Markc]

In a way, yes. Any hard to drive speaker, (read power hungry), is their forte. They do sound just as sweet with efficient speakers though. We've powered 84 db electrostats to very loud volumes and they hardly broke a sweat.Now if we could just figure out a way to market these without spending much.

[Looneybomber]

In a way, yes. Any hard to drive speaker, (read power hungry), is their forte. They do sound just as sweet with efficient speakers though. We've powered 84 db electrostats to very loud volumes and they hardly broke a sweat.Now if we could just figure out a way to market these without spending much.

Send them to a 3rd party tester that can then do tests on them. They can do power testing at say 1%THD and see what it actually puts out (sustained not burst) at various impedences, see how flat the response is from 1-100khz, S/N ratio's, ect. Get some unbiased quantitative data on it and if performs better than other known/famous amps with similar sound quality, that could start generating sales.

For example, something like this.

[Markc]

Yes, we must get them to a professional reviewer, (again). We had them reviewed a little over a year ago and the report came back with a note for improving mid range realism and palpability, ( or close to that). That prompted Tony, (my EE buddy), to come up with a constant current source for the 12At7 tube circuit. This made a marked difference that I heard right away. We implemented the upgrade in our amps and have not had any issues. It's been six years since the first generation and not once has the magic smoke escaped ! It's a solid design.Time to get off our arses and get them back to the reveiwer!